For What You Get, Mama Shelter is Kind of an Expensive Broad

Every so often we feature a hotel review from one of our readers that we feel should be shared with the rest of you dear hotel guests. These reviews are highlighted because they are timely, about cool hotels in cool places and are relatively level-headed. Think you can submit one just like this? Send it in.

We got a reader review in today (well, more like a reader Skype call  how Oprah of us!) from a recent guest at Paris' new hip, hot mom on the block, Mama Shelter.

Touted as a super high-tech, modern-but-affordable option in the City of Light, our reader enjoyed his experience at the hotel overall  but had a few tips and cautionary points to throw in (as told to us):

· Those iMacs in the rooms? Yeah, to get the keyboard to actually use them as a computer, you have to pay a pretty hefty deposit down at the front desk  kind of a hassle.
· Though the decor of the room is pretty cool-looking, the paint looks sort of cheap  almost as though the black walls were painted with chalkboard paint and then the whole write-on-the-walls idea was abandoned somewhere along the way.
· In the small room with black walls, the light was kind of poopy and dark  bummer.
· Beware of the location: it's pretty far from the center of the city and all the biggest attractions  not particularly difficult to get to, just not centrally located. The metro lines are a pretty significant walk from the hotel, too.

You can see in the pics that the paint is not quite tip-top  which makes us sad. But rates start at 109 Euro  $153 USD  so you can decide if it's worth it to you. And for the record, he said the lobby and common spaces were totally awesome, and the room was impeccably clean.